User blog:Willbachbakal/(Champion Rework) Kayle, the Judicator
This is a tentative rework for Kayle, the Judicator. One of the oldest champions in the game, Kayle has held up pretty well for quite some time, with her kit remaining mostly intact over the seasons. However, she has still aged a fair bit, and feels out of place for a whole bunch of reasons: at a time where champions have been receiving more complex and interactive abilities, Kayle has a purely point-and-click kit that, while versatile, makes her annoying to deal with when she's strong, especially in lane. Once an all-purpose carry, Kayle has been mostly relegated to the role of a lane bully with some strong utility, and her ability to fit multiple class descriptions has led to her lacking a strong identity: is she a fighter, a marksman, a mage or a support? Her heavy DPS often clashes with her utility, especially her ult, which has made her particularly difficult to balance on several occasions. In the end, the objective here isn't to make Kayle fit into some neat little box: at the end of it, she's an aggressive autoattacker with powerful ally-oriented utility and some crowd control, and I feel that is unique enough to constitute a niche. Rather, the goal of these changes is to update her kit and make it cohere better, allowing her to output consistent damage with both spells and basic attacks without compromising the health of her ultimate. It's also intended to make her more interactive, toning down some of her on-demand damage in exchange for much better counter-engage potential, which I think she's supposed to excel at above all else. Kayle should still be able to fit a variety of positions, but should also have clearer contributions to her team. Abilities Enemies who strike Kayle or her allied champions are marked for Retribution for seconds, them for the duration and causing her next basic attack against them to consume the mark and deal bonus magic damage. |targeting='Retribution' is a debuff. |spellshield=will not block the ability. |additional=Kayle's resistance reduction debuff is part of what makes her valuable to her team, but it's also a fairly low-visibility effect whose impact is often difficult to appreciate directly. I think it would be better instead to switch her innate to a damage effect and instead move some of her non-damaging power to her active ability set. In her very early days, Riot was looking for ways to implement an effect that would allow her to embody righteous vengeance, i.e. bonus combat stats if an ally died: this isn't quite the same, as I think making ally deaths a condition for more power is a bit of an anti-pattern on her, due to her supportive kit, but I hope it captures some similar gameplay by encouraging Kayle to punish those who have attacked her or her allies. Besides that, though, I also think Kayle needs some serious base stat adjustments: though originally designed to be a melee champion who would occasionally switch to ranged form, Kayle is a ranged champion for all intents and purposes, especially now that cooldown reduction is much more common in the game. To match this, I buffed her attack range from 500 to 125 (she's always ranged, now), and reduced her base health to 555 from , her health growth to 84 from 93, her base health regen to 5 from , and her health regen growth to from . }} Kayle consecrates the target area, causing two waves to erupt from either side of the target location and spread , all enemies caught within. |description2=After 1 second, the consecrated area erupts, dealing magic damage to all enemies inside. |leveling= |leveling2= |cooldown=5 |cost= |costtype=Mana |range=500 |targeting='Reckoning' is a ground-targeted area of effect. |damagetype=magic |spellshield=will block the damage. |additional=Reckoning is a useful ability, in the sense that its slow lets Kayle pin down targets for her team, but its fairly large guaranteed point-and-click ranged damage forces it to be expensive to use, and even so, it makes Kayle more of a lane bully than she needs to be. Additionally, the extremely long duration on the slow (3 seconds) feels pretty bad for Kayle's opponent, since it doesn't really give them a reprieve when getting attacked by either her or her allies. To solve this, I split the ability into two parts, the first being a reliable slow, and the second being unreliable damage. I increased the slow's strength and reduced the ability's cooldown, but also reduced its damage and slow duration, which would make Kayle less bursty while giving her more consistent (and AoE) sticking power overall. }} Kayle heals the target allied champion or herself, increased by 1% per . |description2=For the next 3 seconds, Fervor's target gains bonus movement speed when moving towards enemy champions. |leveling= | }} |leveling2= |cooldown=10 |cost= |costtype=Mana |range=500 |targeting='Fervor' is a unit-targeted ability. |additional=Like Reckoning, Diving Blessing is an ability that's useful, but not always entirely healthy, since it makes Kayle a bit too good at playing safe and running away from fights, which is the opposite of her thing. It also makes for some mildly cheesy boosts when returning to lane, which isn't really interesting either. To remedy this, I adjusted her heal to increase with her target's missing health, and made the bonus movement speed exclusive to movement towards champions. I also significantly buffed the boost's base power at latter ranks and reduced the ability's cooldown, which should allow Kayle to bolster her allies much more efficiently when heading into combat, even if she can't escape from them as well. }} Kayle calls down a beam of holy fire from the sky at her which, after a , travels across the target direction, dealing magic damage to all enemies hit and them for 1 second. |leveling= |cooldown=10 |cost= |costtype=Mana |range=750 |speed=1500 |targeting='Holy Wrath' is a pass-through linear skill shot. |damagetype=magic |additional=Righteous Fury is a cool concept on paper, but in practice it's a bit of a mess: originally, it was intended to be a big moment of power for Kayle in fights, but in the end it became increasingly more of a permanent passive, with no real choice in its activation. Additionally, it makes Kayle fairly oppressive in lane, as her range and large on-hit damage essentially guarantees that she wins every trade. Overall, it's one of the main reasons why Kayle doesn't feel interactive to her opponents. While I effectively shifted the steroid onto Kayle's base stats and her innate (she's intended here to be a permanent ranged champion with powerful on-hit damage that enemies can play more with), I think she deserves to have an entirely different ability here, hence the skillshot silence. It's not meant to be especially good for poking, but its instant arrival at Kayle's location and silence is meant to be a strong deterrent to melee champions, especially assassins, allowing her some personal survivability and additional measures of defense against close-ranged opponents. }} Kayle bathes the target allied champion or herself in holy light, rendering the target temporarily immune to all damage. |leveling= |cooldown= |range=500 |targeting='Intervention' is a unit-targeted ability. |additional=Intervention is an iconic ability, and I think it's the only effect on Kayle that is both useful and (mostly) healthy. Its health, though, comes with heavily restrictive limitations, and implies Kayle cannot ever have major burst, or enough damage in general to kill enemies in under 3 seconds. Often, this has not been the case, particularly when Kayle stacks AP and attack speed for extremely rapid on-hit damage, and has led to her feeling even less interactive than she usually is. With a kit like this, though, she should offer her opponents many more opportunities to avoid her damage, and should therefore not be able to use her ult to guarantee kills against enemies with lots of remaining health still. }} What are your thoughts? Would this set of changes appeal to you? Category:Custom champions